AIDWA identifies 'core' issues for campaign

By Our Staff Reporter

VISAKHAPATNAM, NOV. 28. The All-India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) has prioritised education, health and food security for women as the issues for a campaign in the light of the success of its just-concluded sixth triennial national conference here.

Ms. Brinda Karat, AIDWA general secretary, told reporters here on Wednesday that the conference discussed wide-ranging issues and sent across three important messages of seeking a better deal for women in the context of health, education and food.

``Our movement has to change the political agenda of the country and making social reform a crucial component of it. We are in the 21st century but require to draw lessons from the freedom struggle that laid emphasis on social reform. The political movement has to be in the fundamental sense and not party- based,'' she explained.

She pointed out the AIDWA's concept of empowerment of women was not dependent on policy decisions and their implementation ``which are far removed from women.''

Referring to the question of food security for women, she said that the AIDWA was of the unanimous view that the ``targeted system'' of the Government had served to exclude the poor and that food security should be made a universal right.

``The BPL (below poverty line) system is arbitrary. Female-headed families do not have ration cards. If for some reason, the husband is missing, it is impossible for the woman to prove herself to be the head of the family,'' she said.

Pointing out that AIDWA was poised to launch a nationwide campaign on this issue early next year, Ms. Karat faulted the proposed 93rd Constitution Amendment on the right to education of children for excluding pre-schoolchildren and incorporating a provision for the punishment of the parents.

``Working women need the guarantee of education for pre- schoolchildren. In the case of the punishment proposed, it would be the women who would have to bear the brunt of it. In the poor families, women go out to work often leaving their daughter at home to tend to the children in the pre-school age and the amendment proposes to punish such women now,'' she said.

The AIDWA criticised the Centre for its silence on the six States adopting ``coercive policies'' in population control which ultimately led to ``punishing the poor for their poverty.'' AIDWA wanted the Centre to wind up the National Commission on Population if it could not rein in such States.

On the plight of minority women in Bangladesh, Ms. Karat said, ``We support the secular organisations in Bangladesh which have come forward to protect the minorities there. According to our reports, the attacks on the minorities are mainly in the rural areas of Bangladesh and mostly for land.''

And as part of its effort to reach out to the women of Afghanistan, AIDWA hoped to sensitise the Government of India to the problems of Afghan women by arranging an interface for the delegate of Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (who attended the AIDWA conference) with officials in the Central Government. AIDWA, according to Ms. Karat, would strive for unity among women of South Asia.

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